A good host provides a
haven of repose from the outside world, a peaceful space. If it functions as it
should, a hospitable place allows for recline; it is synonymous with comfort
and safety. Bring me your tired and your poor… It is something of a refuge. A
chair is also something of a host in the most domestic, intimate and corporeal
terms[1]. If it succeeds in its design, its sitter doesn’t
explicitly notice it; a good chair in fact feels like very little. So, as it is
said, a chair is a difficult object[2].

KÖNIG GALERIE is pleased
to present Holle-Vanderbilt by artist Michaela Meise (b. 1976). In the chapel of St. Agnes stands a gathering
of chairs and table; alongside it a ceramic figurine sits over her woven
tapestry and feathered pillow-like ceramics furnish the scene. For her sixth exhibition
with the gallery, the Berlin-based artist continues her investigation of the
wooden object, potentialities of clay and systems for display. Through these
forms, Meise brings together distinct topics that at first seem disparate or
even contradictory: modern political and cultural artifacts encounter fairytale
lore and celebrity-inspired décor.

Recycled motifs and
borrowed reference material are lacquered onto flea market furniture–each
operating as a host for pressed Elderflowers, political ephemera, feminine
fabrics or the engravings of text and currencies that decorate their
surface. There is a stark directness
with which Meise sticks on her cutouts; constellations created seem to bear no
strict correspondence to one another and each piece also bears its own
idiosyncratic design, signs of use, and specific history. Narratives crop up
and then fade. Carvings recall teenage listlessness, prison wall etchings, but
also hieroglyphics, so that these works become something of an archeological
artifact, or an anachronistic time capsule.

The specific method of
textile lacquering implemented by Meise is also something borrowed. American
trust fund millionaire Gloria Vanderbilt, after which the works and exhibition
in part takes name, is the proverbial Renaissance woman: at once a model, writer,
socialite, and designer.

Vanderbilt was known for
her maximalist use of layering textiles, patterns and color, and lacquering
vivid fabrics onto the floor. Her aesthetic is a blend typical of American
bourgeoisie and also indicative of the country home, hobbyist craft, and
outsider art. Appropriated here, such a language clashes with the weight of
various content: the carved Euro, a Red Army Fraction clipping, and the
Krautrock lyrics your father was such a good Nazi, yet only two million a year.

Among these empty seats
crouches Frau Holle. Meise’s ongoing experimentations with clay take the shape
now of a Grimm fairytale, a popular German story recorded from an enduring
pre-Christian legend of a destiny goddess, a determiner of fate, and a deity
who shakes her featherbed over the world to make it snow. Paralleled against
the imagery woven across the other works on view, Meise continues her
juxtaposition of antiquated mythology against contemporary everyday narrative.

Such complex
relationships are also established through Meise’s titling system, where she
forges new identities and lineages by hyphenating pairs of family names. Each
becomes a conceptual compound, with Vanderbilt persisting as a foundational
molecule. Yücel, the journalist currently in a Turkish detention, is fused to
the heiress Vanderbilt through Meise’s syntax. As such, very different legacies
come to an awkward and contentious head-to-head. Dissonance abounds.
Vanderbilt–a name woven into the fabric of modern American mythologies.
Vanderbilt–a conglomerate brand name that elicits the highest echelons of the
American Dream, the one that newcomers seeking refuge might project onto
American shores–a dream rapidly disintegrating. Vanderbilt–which echoes other
comparable dynasties: The Clintons, The Kardashians, The Trumps; each whose
inner lives and workings vividly circulate within the public imagination,
shrouded in gossip and rumor, growing and shifting cumulating identities,
building stories which are not unlike a myth or even a fairytale.

Kate Brown

[1] “The specificity of the
challenge lies in the intimacy with which a body is to interact with a chair,
an intimacy far greater and literally more pressing than between a body and a
building." Stark, Frances. The Architect & the Housewife. London: Book
Works, 1999, p.17.

[2] “A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost
easier,” famously stated by architect Ludwig Mies van de Rohe.